A forum devoted to current political, economic trends, and news of the Maghreb region.

Saturday, June 11, 2016

In Defense of the Rif and the Pitfalls of Parachute Journalism

One of the problem with modern day journalism is the tendency to
sensationalize stories, and the use of catchy dramatic titles, often with
little analytical nuance and value. Leela Jacinto’s piece in Foreign Policy this week subscribes to
this unfortunate trend of parachute journalism that labors to grasp at straws
of relevance, but sadly fails to deliver. The article is misleading both in its
title and content. The author makes a number of questionable blanket statements
in its attempt to establish a tenuous link between the recent wave of terrorism
in France and Belgium, and the northern mountainous region of Rif in Morocco,
where some of the terrorists claim ancestral homeland. Jacinto goes even
farther than this, making the unsubstantiated assertion that the Rif region is
the “heartland of global terrorism” – not
Molenbeek, Raqqa, or Waziristan. She writes:

“At
the heart of terrorist strikes across the world over
the past 15 years lies the Rif. A mountainous region in northern Morocco,
stretching from the teeming cities of Tangier and Tetouan in the west to the
Algerian border in the east, the Rif is an impoverished area rich in marijuana
plants, hashish peddlers, smugglers, touts, and resistance heroes that has
rebelled against colonial administrators, postcolonial kings, and any authority
imposed from above. For the children of the Rif who have been transplanted to
Europe, this background can combine with marginalization, access to criminal
networks, and radicalization to make the vulnerable ones uniquely drawn to acts
of terrorism.”

What evidence does Jacinto present to substantiate these claims?
Notorious terrorists such as Najim Laachouri and the parents of Salah Abdeslam
were born in Morocco in the Rif. That evidence seems thin. She does offer the
slight disclaimer at the end of paragraph that the ringleader of the Paris
attacks, Abdlehamid Abaaoud, didn’t
come from the Rif, which should provide an early debunking lacunae of the
entire premise of the article:

“Laachraoui
was Riffian: a Belgian national predominantly raised in the Schaerbeek
neighborhood of Brussels but born in Ajdir, a small Moroccan town with a proud
Rif history. Paris attack suspect Salah Abdeslam and his brother Brahim, who
was one of the Paris attackers who targeted bars and restaurants in the 10th
and 11th arrondissements before blowing himself up at a popular Paris eatery on
Nov. 13, 2015, were also both Riffian by parentage. (Ringleader Abdelhamid
Abaaoud was not of Riffian origin, for what it’s worth — his family came from
southern Morocco.)

Jacinto’s
article does not offer any analysis of the complex radicalization and
indoctrination of these primarily European citizens. Not a single one of these
terrorists was radicalized, indoctrinated, or trained in the Rif Mountains. None
of them lived, if at all, in the Rif for any extensive period of time. The fact
that they or their parents were born in one of the most marginalized, poorest
regions in Morocco, home to cannabis, contraband smuggling, and violent history
with colonialism and the autocratic Makhzen state are indicators that the
essence of radical religious terrorism that is gripping Europe and the world
today lies in the Rif Mountains.

The
Riffian identity and culture, and the “baggage of neglect”, as the article
contends without any shred of evidence sociological or otherwise, is
radicalizing. Placed in a comparative perspective, Jacinto claims that Turkish
Belgians are not as militant as Moroccan Belgians, simply because they are not
exposed to Arabic Wahhabi literature. Either Jacinto does not know, or prefers
to ignore the fact that the Wahhabi ideology has been long translated to many
world languages, including Turkish.Moreover, we know that several of these European Muslim terrorists do
not speak Arabic and rely on translated videos and literature of radical
Islamism. ISIS has also been more successful in recruiting homegrown European
terrorists in their own language. But more devastating to the article is the
lack of basic facts about the Rif. Riffians are predominantly Amazigh, who are
ethnically and linguistically not
Arab, and do not speak Arabic. According to Jacinto’s argument, they are as
foreign to Wahhabi ideology disseminated in the Arabic language as the Turks
are.

The
author also makes the feeble argument that the secular cultural history of
modern Turkey explains the lack of Turkish terrorists in Europe. No evidence is
provided of this – only the conjecture of one of the sources in her article.
However, we know that there are a number of Turkish terrorists fighting for
ISIS. According to the Soufan group, there are 2,100 Turkish
fighters with ISIS, the fourth largest contingency of radical Islamists after
Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and Russia (not an Arab-speaking country).

The
general premise is that these Riffians or their parents brought a sort of baggage
of marginalization with them to Europe, which facilitated their radicalization,
regardless of their early criminal background or individual alienation in a
society that seeks to radically assimilate them as European citizens only.

Jacinto seems to think that all she needs to do is point out
that some of the recent terrorists in Europe are from Moroccan-Riffian descent
in order to offer conclusive proof of a Moroccan-Riffian radical gene. That is
a dangerously false assertion on a number of levels. First of all, these
terrorists are more Belgian or French than Moroccan. Some don't even speak the
Amazigh dialects or associate culturally or cognitively with their land of
origin. Their radicalization happened in Europe and their malaise is a European
one of integration and assimilation, legitimized by reference to a violent
religious eschatology. The problem is located more in European societies where
the radicalized Moroccan transplants are liminal individuals with a dangerous
sense of identity crisis.

One
of the major characteristics of religious terrorism is that sense of alienation
in one’s society as evidenced by generations of religious extremists from the
Christian identity movement at the heart of the Oklahoma City bombing, to the Jewish
zealotry of Baruch Goldstein, and the apocalyptic world view of Aum Shinrikyo’s
perverted Buddhism in Japan. The sense of marginalization of a great number of
Muslims feel at home, be it in the Muslim majority states under the yoke of
authoritarian rule, or in European countries facing a divisive dangerous
identity crisis. These radical outsiders view themselves at the fringe of their
socio-political system, where violence becomes a sacramental act justified by ossified
religious principles, and legitimized through a reference to a transcendent
violent passage to the afterlife.

The
article commits the sin of collectivization and cast the whole Rif region in
disrepute. Rif is among one of the most disadvantaged regions in Morocco, with
a particularly bloody history of state violence. But several regions in Morocco
feature the same menu of socio-economic ostracism and pathologies, with little
or similar recourse to violence.

The fact that there are, indeed, violent terrorists who are born
and radicalized in Morocco is irrefutable. After all, there are more than 1200
Moroccans fighting for ISIS according to the Soufan group. But the facile
assumptions underpinning this article by an “award-winning international news
reporter,” and the sensationalized claim that the Rif is the hotbed of global
terrorism today are egregious and devoid of any analytical or empirical value. Radical
Islamism is not an ethnic issue, it is a complex set of religious,
socio-economic, and identity-based problems. ISIS has reprehensibly
demonstrated that violent Islamist extremism knows no national, ethnic, racial
or social boundaries. Its sources or hotbeds are only a reality in the mind of
frivolous journalists looking for sensationalized headlines.